Sports

Why a 5-foot-6, 160-pound SEC walk-on who can't attend most games wouldn't stop until he made the team

Published

8 months ago

May 4, 2024

Why a 5-foot-6, 160-pound SEC walk-on who can't attend most games wouldn't stop until he made the team

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Sam Salz emerged from Texas A&M’s Bright Football Complex at dusk in early February, eager to explain how he got here.

“Over there,” he pointed, patting down his yarmulke with his other hand. “That’s where it happened.”

The patch of land in the distance sat adjacent to where the Aggies football team practiced. Salz, just a student with a dream in the spring of 2021, would arrive at the field every day an hour before Texas A&M practiced and stay an hour after the practice concluded.

A 5-foot-6, 160-pound Orthodox Jewish student who had never played organized football, Salz intended to try out for the SEC program as a walk-on. He worked on getting into shape and getting faster, even if he didn’t know how. He used old shoes instead of cones for drills. He lined up trash cans to simulate the line of scrimmage. He had no cleats. He didn’t even have a position to practice. He just worked.

A graduate of Kohelet Yeshiva High School — a Modern Orthodox college prep school in Philadelphia with roughly 100 students that did not field a football team — Salz had an improbable mission. And, like always, he had a plan.

Salz thought if he showed up every day and worked out as if he were on the team, he’d be noticed. But he didn’t leave it to chance. That fall, he attended then-head coach Jimbo Fisher’s weekly radio show at Rudy’s Country Store and B-B-Q to meet the man who would determine his fate.

“I walked up to him and looked him in the eye and said, ‘I’m Sam Salz and I’m going to walk on to your football team,’” he recalled, ignoring a team policy requiring walk-ons to have played varsity football in high school.

Fisher looked back at the undersized Salz, being more gracious than serious, and replied, “I’d be honored.”

Salz kept returning to the radio show, the same way he would to that patch of land. He approached Fisher again and asked if he could attend practice to better understand what the Aggies did. Salz scribbled down what he learned and incorporated it into his independent workouts.

The field Salz used was separated from the Aggies practice fields by a chain-link fence.

“I told myself, ‘I’m on this team,’” Salz said. “They are practicing on that side of the fence, and I’m practicing on this side of the fence, but I’m on the team. That was my firm belief. I’d practice, and the energy was great. Guys would come out of practice and realize this guy in a yarmulke was working out every day, and they’d hype me up. Coaches would notice. I’d talk to the coaches.”

Salz didn’t realize the coaches were talking about him, too.

Salz, 21, became obsessed with playing college football at a young age, for reasons he can’t exactly pinpoint.

“People talk about ‘Rudy’ to me all the time,” Salz said of the popular motion picture about a Notre Dame fan willing to do anything to make the team. “It’s funny, I’ve never seen it.”

College football games largely fall on Shabbat — the Jewish Sabbath, observed from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. As a result, he didn’t grow up watching the sport.

For an observant Orthodox Jew, Shabbat is an entire day meant for communing with God, whether it be studying Torah, praying or being with your community. Judaic law limits distractions. There’s no work, no lifting weights, no cooking, no cleaning, no business transactions, no usage of electricity and no riding in motorized vehicles, among other rules.

And, obviously no playing football.

Sam Salz can suit up for the Aggies only after sundown for Saturday games. (Texas A&M Athletics)

So, what drew Salz to Texas A&M?

While in high school, Salz — like many other kids — got swept into the Dude Perfect craze on the internet. A group of friends took the web by storm by recording trick shots and putting them on YouTube. Salz learned that the members of Dude Perfect — now headquartered in Frisco, Texas — were college roommates at Texas A&M. Salz became infatuated with the school, a former military institution known for big-time ambitions, revered traditions, oil tycoons and Midnight Yell on Friday nights and Aggies football games on Saturdays.

Sam Salz started out as a running back but is now a wide receiver for the Aggies. (Texas A&M Athletics)

He researched. The university has a total enrollment north of 70,000 students and there are an estimated 500 Jewish students on campus, according to the University’s Hillel website, less than 1 percent of the population.

He reached out to Yossi Lazaroff, the rabbi of the Texas A&M Chabad. He concluded College Station was the right fit.

“It was really about the culture, what the school represents and the alumni network,” he said. “It’s very different from any other school in America. It also has a strong Jewish community, even if it’s not large.”

Salz said he felt a desire to prove to himself — and to other Orthodox Jewish people — that religious beliefs don’t have to infringe on goals or pursuit of happiness. For him, for some reason, that involved football.

“I’ve always been a ‘see if I can do it’ type,” Salz said. “I don’t know how this got into my head. People think I’m BS-ing, but I always had this belief in my head, back to when I was a little kid, that I had to play college football or else I wouldn’t have done everything I could’ve — or should’ve — in life.”

When Salz was a child, his school held a fundraiser selling cookie dough. The student who sold the most won a flat-screen television. Salz became obsessed and, with the help of a family friend who was an accountant, devised a sales strategy.

“He won,” said his mother, Marianna Salz. “I’m of the mindset that if you want to try something, go ahead and do it. I know my son, so this wasn’t as big of a surprise and shock as it may have been for other people. He is a determined person. When he told me he wanted to do this, I was like, ‘OK, this is your next thing. Try it. Do it.’”

Even with all of Salz’s planning, he never realized Fisher could see him working out from his Kyle Field office.

“In the offseason, even on days we didn’t practice, he’d still come out there,” said Mark Robinson, Texas A&M’s associate athletic director at the time and currently the chief of staff at Florida. “There’s a balcony that overlooks the field. (Fisher) would see him out there and just say, ‘That’s the same kid who comes to the radio show. He’s always working out, and I love his drive.’”

When he first got to College Station in 2021, Salz took online classes at a Texas A&M system school and couldn’t try out for the football team until he became a full-time student on the main campus. And then before the 2022 season, Texas A&M had so many players in the program that it didn’t hold walk-on tryouts.

But during a difficult 2022 season — one that would include a six-game losing streak — Fisher wanted to make a statement to the locker room. He wanted someone like Salz, who wanted something bigger than seemed possible and was willing to work for it, on his roster.

“Halfway through the season, that’s when I got the text from Mark,” Salz said.

The text from Robinson was simple: “Sam, do you have some time to come by the football offices today or tomorrow?”

As Salz responded yes and received more information about the walk-on process, he couldn’t contain himself.

He screamed, jumped up and down and fist-pumped as hard as he could.

Fisher and Robinson invited him on the team, even though he lacked the size and the experience necessary to compete in the SEC.

“I don’t want to sound arrogant or self-aggrandizing when I say this. But there was something that I was willing to do that most people were not,” Salz said. “I made human connections and made myself a known person to them. I think (Fisher) appreciated that persistence. It was something old-school coaches would appreciate.”

Salz never hid his faith, proudly wearing his yarmulke and tzitzit, the head covering and the knotted fringes or tassels on the Jewish prayer shawl that serve as reminders of the 613 commandments in the Torah. But he was initially worried that the coaching staff wouldn’t be understanding of the time constraints of his religion and his need to eat only kosher food.

Sam Salz attended a high school with roughly 100 students. Now he is on a team that plays in a stadium with more than 100,000 seats.

Texas A&M, though, accommodated Salz. He isn’t expected to participate in team activities on Jewish holidays. The first practice after he was invited onto the team fell on Yom Kippur, and he didn’t attend. Team nutritionist Tiffany Ilten makes sure Salz has access to kosher meals, which they get from a distributor in Cherry Hill, N.J. A microwave in the team facility reads “kosher food only.”

“Our main priority was making sure that all of our student-athletes are fed and nourished,” Ilten said. “It was a challenge at first, but not in a bad way. It was just something new we all had to educate ourselves on.”

Salz and Robinson, who is also Jewish, connected by wrapping tefillin, small leather boxes and straps, around their arms and heads, symbolically binding themselves to God.

Salz, who remains part of the program after Fisher’s November firing and the hire of Mike Elko, started out as a running back. He was brought along slowly, still lacking foundational football knowledge and the physical makeup to run between tackles. The longer he has been on the team, the more he’s been incorporated onto the scout team, where he’s likely to make his biggest impact.

He moved to receiver, where Texas A&M needed depth. He understands his physical limitations when matching up with elite athletes. But as he talked about it, he reached into his pocket and shared a clip of him running a drag route in practice and making a nice catch.

“He goes hard all the time,” Texas A&M strength coach Tommy Moffitt said. “There is a size discrepancy between him and the other guys, but he doesn’t let that discourage him. The players have embraced him, and he works his tail off.”

Added former A&M wide receiver Ainias Smith, a fifth-round pick of the Eagles in the 2024 NFL Draft: “We needed somebody like that on the team. Once people get here, it seems like everybody feels like they made it. His story motivates us to keep going.”

Salz believes he is the only Orthodox Jewish player in college football. It’s not something that is tracked by the NCAA.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for him is reconciling that no matter how good he gets, he will always have restrictions on game day. If the Aggies play during the day, he can’t attend because he’s observing Shabbat.

For night games, he walks more than a mile from his apartment to Kyle Field. There are workers by the entrance who let him into the building — he can’t use his thumbprint scanners on Shabbat — and he finishes out the sabbath in the team rooms. He studies Torah, eats a meal and then gets suited up while the sun goes down. In the middle of the third quarter, he runs out of the tunnel and joins his team in his No. 39 jersey, yarmulke and tzitzit.

“My teammates joke that in the new NCAA video game that my rating should be a 99 overall but I can only be used in the fourth quarter of night games,” he said.

Salz has yet to appear in a game. He couldn’t participate in Texas A&M’s all-walk-on kickoff team (which paid homage to the 12th Man Kickoff Team from the 1980s) during its win over Abilene Christian last November because the game was during the day.

So why does he put himself through this routine if there isn’t the payoff of eventually playing?

“I know why I’m doing it: for my Jewish brothers and sisters,” Salz said. “I knew I’d be in a position to inspire a lot of people.”

(Top image Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photo: courtesy of Texas A&M Athletics)

Related Topics:College Football Culture Featured Texas A&M Aggies

Click to comment

Sports

For NHL Winter Classic, it’s time to think outside the box — and the stadium: 10 proposed venues

Published

7 hours ago

December 27, 2024

Press Room

For NHL Winter Classic, it’s time to think outside the box — and the stadium: 10 proposed venues

There were games at iconic stadiums such as Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, Dodger Stadium and Soldier Field. There was Sidney Crosby scoring the shootout winner as snowflakes fell at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Buffalo. More than 105,000 people flocked to Michigan Stadium to watch the Red Wings play the Maple Leafs. More than 85,000 saw the Predators play the Stars at the Cotton Bowl. More than 75,000 watched the Blackhawks play the Bruins at Notre Dame Stadium.

But of the 41 outdoor games the NHL has put on since the 2003 Heritage Classic in Edmonton, the ones NHL president of content and events Steve Mayer — the mad scientist behind the games — gets asked about are the ones nobody could attend: Golden Knights–Avalanche and Flyers-Bruins at Lake Tahoe during the Covid-19 pandemic in February 2021.

“That reinforces how special that particular game was,” Mayer said. “We stepped outside the box, took risks and we spent money. And I think we created something unforgettable.”

Unforgettable is the right word. Wrigley and Fenway are cool, for sure, but once you’ve seen a hockey game inside a baseball stadium, you’ve seen every hockey game inside every baseball stadium. Football stadiums make for massive crowds and millions of dollars at the gate, but they’re all pretty generic by nature. What the NHL created at Lake Tahoe was something entirely different, something that no other sport could pull off. The dearth of crowd noise somehow amplified the incredible vistas. Every camera angle was jaw-dropping. It was utterly spectacular and yes, unforgettable.

Of course, it was kind of a disaster, too. The Vegas-Colorado game was suspended after one period because of sun glare and melting ice and didn’t restart until midnight Eastern Time. And the Philadelphia-Boston game got bumped from NBC to NBC Sports Network because it was delayed more than five hours for the same issue. But that Flyers-Bruins game — on a different channel than expected at a different time than expected — still drew more than a million viewers, the most-watched regular-season game on cable in nearly 20 years.

So why has the NHL retreated to the same old stadiums since? This year’s Winter Classic is between two teams we’ve seen in a Winter Classic (Blackhawks-Blues) in a stadium that’s already hosted a Winter Classic (Wrigley Field). Fact is, there just aren’t many iconic buildings left in which the league can plop down a rink. The visuals become the same over time and the games lose that special feeling. Well, at least on television.

That’s the thing about these games — they’re for the locals and sponsors as much as anything. It’s kind of like All-Star weekend; most of the hockey world couldn’t care less, but when you’re in the city and at the venues, it’s quite a bit of fun (and quite lucrative for the league). Going to an outdoor game in person is an undeniably cool (and often very cold) experience. Watching it on TV is less so.

The local juice is what drives these games. They make millions of dollars in gate revenue for the league and they’re very expensive to produce, so it’s easy to understand why the league is content with the status quo. Invest a few million in infrastructure to make a few million in gate revenue — that’s a tidy bit of business. Heck, Sports Business Journal reported that the Michigan Stadium game netted the league a cool $20 million in 2014. Who’s going to turn that down?

The Lake Tahoe game, meanwhile, didn’t make the league any money. Future non-stadium games could cost a fortune to produce — building temporary seating and NHL-caliber locker rooms, ensuring there’s parking, bathrooms, security. Hot water, even. There’s no cash to grab at a game like this.

Tahoe was born out of unique circumstances. There were no fans in the arenas anyway, so why not do something completely different?

“The league’s priority has always been to host games in packed stadiums, to bring the game to as many people as possible,” Mayer said. “Gary Bettman loves — and so do we — the energy of the live fans. And the second we were able to bring the fans back to the buildings, we just said, OK, let’s go back to doing the outdoor games. Have we talked about other games? Of course. Do we look back at Lake Tahoe fondly? Oh, you bet. It was incredible. But that’s the reason we haven’t been back.”

Well, maybe it’s time the league starts taking risks again. The sports TV landscape is getting more crowded every year. This year’s Winter Classic is at 4 p.m. Central Time on New Year’s Eve to avoid overlapping with the NFL (which plays just about every day of the week now) and the College Football Playoff. The NHL will have some fun with the timing — every hour on the hour, they’ll celebrate a different time zone’s New Year at Wrigley — but it’s getting tougher and tougher to stand out, to break through the noise, to draw eyeballs.

You know how you get eyeballs? Not by rehashing venues. Not by hosting an outdoor game in yet another stadium in London or Prague or Mexico City or Australia. No, you do it with visuals that no other sport can match. The NHL did that in Lake Tahoe. It can do it again all across North America. Rather than chase the immediate payday of a stadium game, the NHL should start thinking about the long game — about drawing in and hooking new viewers to this incredible, talent-laden golden age of the sport, about creating entry points for new fans, about investing now for future dividends. Take the modest financial hit now, and cash in later by growing the game.

Here are 10 modest proposals for future outdoor games, some a little more realistic than others. But hey, it shouldn’t take a global pandemic for us to think outside the box — or outside the stadium, for that matter.

A snow-covered mountain is reflected in Lake Louise in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada. (Patrick T. Fallon / Getty Images)

1. Lake Louise

Oilers vs. Flames

The Battle of Alberta in the province’s most iconic setting is the most obvious choice for a Lake Tahoe-style game. Anyone who’s been to Banff and Jasper National Parks (and the breathtaking Icefields Parkway that runs between them) can attest that it’s among the most beautiful places imaginable. The NHL has at least looked into Lake Louise in the past, but Canadian regulations about signage (read: advertising) and construction on public lands are understandably quite strict.

But Canada’s national sport in Canada’s national treasure? C’mon, Canada. Let’s make it happen.

“Lake Tahoe was unique because we used private property, building on the golf course,” Mayer said. “(But) in every one of these games that we do, there’s a fair amount of red tape to work around. We always feel like there are clever and creative ways to put any event on. … Yes, there’s red tape involved, but there are also some of these locations and landmarks that would give anything to have a special event come to their world. So sometimes they’re also very cooperative in getting some of these things done.”

The National Mall in Washington D.C. (Mandel Ngan / Getty Images)

2. The National Mall

Capitals vs. Penguins

Imagine Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin going head-to-head in the shadow of the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol and the White House. Not American enough for you? OK, imagine John Carlson and Bryan Rust instead. The best fit likely would be between the Washington Monument and the Capitol, but it’d be an awe-inspiring sight to see a rink on the other side, between the Washington Monument and the World War II Memorial, with Abraham Lincoln having the best seat in the house across the reflecting pool.

And there’d be room to build temporary seating, which could go a long way toward persuading the NHL it’s worth it. Picture something like Northwestern’s temporary lakefront football stadium but on the Mall.

“If we decide at some point to do something (like this), I don’t think we’d ever do something with no fans (again),” Mayer said. “If we built some sort of mini stadium somewhere and it was extraordinary and it offered fans something they’ve never seen before, I think we could pull something off and do something extremely unique.”

An aerial view of Manhattan looking south over Central Park in New York City. (Stan Honda / Getty Images)

3. Central Park

Rangers vs. Islanders

Hey, if you can have Shakespeare in the Park and Springsteen in the Park, then you can have Rempe in the Park.

Niagara Falls is an easy trip for two hockey markets. (John Moore / Getty Images)

4. Niagara Falls

Sabres vs. Maple Leafs

Who needs the roar of the crowd when you have the roar of 700,000 gallons of water per second rushing over the border between New York and Ontario? Put the rink on the Canadian side. The views are way better.

The busts of U.S. presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln tower over the Black Hills at Mount Rushmore National Monument in Keystone, S.D. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)

5. Mount Rushmore

Wild vs. Utah Hockey Club

OK, we’re really wish-casting now. And given the topography of the area, the league might have to take over the parking lot for a few weeks, essentially shutting down the park to visitors. But the visuals would be spectacular. And Honest Abe gets to take in a second game.

Cinderella’s Castle at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images)

6. Disney World

Panthers vs. Lightning

There’s been plenty of speculation that the state of Florida finally will get an outdoor game next season. Mayer and his team do love a challenge, after all. Drop a rink down right in front of the iconic Cinderella Castle in the Magic Kingdom. It’s not that busy there during Christmas break, right? Right? Hello?

An aerial view of Grant Park and the skyline in Chicago. (Tannen Maury / Getty Images)

7. Grant Park

Blackhawks vs. Red Wings

Yes, yes, get your jokes in. We’re talking about yet another Blackhawks outdoor game. But we’ve seen a hockey rink at Wrigley Field before. Why not move the game about six miles south in the same field that hosts Lollapalooza each summer, the same field in which Barack Obama gave his first Election Night speech and where the Blackhawks celebrated the 2013 Stanley Cup championship? With Lake Michigan to the east and the brilliant Chicago skyline to the west, with Buckingham Fountain to the north and the stately museum campus to the south, Grant Park is a magical setting. The park has a natural amphitheater setting, too, so building in bleachers would be feasible. Bears kickers have to deal with the wind whipping off the lake. Why not the Blackhawks?

An aerial view of the pier on Santa Monica Beach. (Mario Tama / Getty Images)

8. Santa Monica Pier

Kings vs. Ducks

The NHL has proven it can put a rink in Los Angeles, with the Kings and Ducks playing at Dodger Stadium in the 2014 Stadium Series. Now picture a rink right on the beach, built right into the sand, with the iconic Ferris wheel and the Pacific waves lapping on the shore a slap shot away. If we can have a basketball game on an aircraft carrier, then surely we can build a level ice surface on the beach.

Fans watch the Vancouver Canucks play the Edmonton Oilers at a “Playoffs in the Park” viewing party for Game 3 of last season’s Stanley Cup second-round playoff series in Vancouver. (Ethan Cairns / Canadian Press via AP)

9. Stanley Park

Canucks vs. Kraken

Yep, same Stanley that the Cup is named after, Governor General Lord Frederick Stanley. This beautiful park is almost entirely covered in trees, but there’s a clearing called Brockton Oval that could accommodate a rink and some bleachers, assuming (again) the NHL could navigate that Canadian red tape that stymied the Lake Louise idea. Vancouver Harbor and the mountains in the distance, with shots of whales breaching in the Pacific leading into commercial breaks? Can’t do much better than that. It would make for an unforgettable setting from perhaps North America’s most picturesque big city.

An aerial view shows Alcatraz island in San Francisco. Alcatraz Island is 1.25 miles offshore from San Francisco and initially was a federal prison before being converted into a tourist attraction. (Josh Edelson / Getty Images)

10. Alcatraz

Sharks vs. Avalanche

You want ratings? Here are your ratings. And there’s a nice tie-in to NHL history here. The first NHL outdoor game ever played was an exhibition match between the Detroit Red Wings and the inmates of the Marquette Branch Prison in Michigan in 1954. Hopefully this game will be a little more competitive than that one; they stopped keeping score after the Wings took an 18-0 lead in the first period. Imagine the views. Imagine the special jerseys the team could come up with. Imagine referee Wes McCauley pausing right before the opening puck drop and saying into his microphone, “Macklin, Nathan … Welcome to The Rock.”

Honorable mentions: Yosemite Valley, the Las Vegas Strip, Yellowstone National Park, Prince Edward Island, Apostle Islands, Liberty Island.

(Top photo of the National Mall: Saul Loeb / Getty Images)

Sports

Seahawks pick up ugly win over Bears to remain in NFC West title hunt

Published

7 hours ago

December 27, 2024

Press Room

Seahawks pick up ugly win over Bears to remain in NFC West title hunt

Join Fox News for access to this content

You have reached your maximum number of articles. Log in or create an account FREE of charge to continue reading.

By entering your email and pushing continue, you are agreeing to Fox News’ Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, which includes our Notice of Financial Incentive.

Please enter a valid email address.

Nothing was pretty from both offenses in this game, but the Seattle Seahawks came away with a critical win over the Chicago Bears, 6-3, on “Thursday Night Football.”

Seattle moves to 9-7 on the season, and they will be watching what the Los Angeles Rams do against the Arizona Cardinals on Saturday night as Week 18’s matchup between both teams would determine the winner of the NFC West.

Meanwhile, the Bears are looking toward next season already at 4-12.

Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith (7) hands the ball to running back Zach Charbonnet (26) against the Chicago Bears during the first quarter at Soldier Field. (Daniel Bartel-Imagn Images)

As the score indicates, no touchdowns were scored in this game as both teams had trouble finding pay dirt.

It didn’t appear that was going to be the case when the Seahawks’ first drive of the game ended after an incomplete pass from Geno Smith to Tyler Lockett on third-and-three from Chicago’s nine-yard line.

They moved the ball well on the game’s opening drive, settling for a field goal, but appeared to have the game plan to beat the Bears’ defense.

2025 SUPER BOWL ODDS: CHIEFS, LIONS TAKE TOP SPOTS; BILLS FALL

That wasn’t the case with three straight punts in the ensuing drives for Seattle before they settled for another field goal near the end of the first half. However, Caleb Williams and the Bears’ offense weren’t doing much to play spoiler on their end.

Chicago ran 11 total plays combined over their first three drives, continuously stalling until some life came in the fourth. In fact, it appeared we had our first touchdown of the game in this one when Williams found fellow rookie Rome Odunze for a 17-yard score with 3:27 remaining in the second quarter.

But right guard Jake Curhan was called for offensive holding, nullifying the touchdown, and the Bears ultimately settled for three points – their only score of the game.

The second half didn’t see a point on the scoreboard, as both offenses showed ineptitude. However, there was another moment the Bears seemed to score, and it was on defense after forcing a fumble on Seahawks receiver Pharoah Brown.

Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams (18) passes the ball against the Seattle Seahawks during the second quarter at Soldier Field. (Daniel Bartel-Imagn Images)

Kyler Gordon scooped up the ball and ran 62 yards to the house. However, it was later ruled that Gordon was down by contact, nullifying yet another Bears touchdown. Six plays later, generating just one total yard, the Bears punted away.

The final drive of the game saw the Bears in control, and despite the lack of scoring, they still had a chance to at least tie the game to force overtime. Williams kept the drive alive with multiple scramble plays, including a heave on fourth-and-5 to find D.J. Moore to move the chains.

However, facing fourth-and-10 just out of Cairo Santos’ field goal range, Williams was forced to launch one in the air with an all-out blitz called by Seattle and it was intercepted to seal the Seahawks’ win.

On the stat sheet, Smith was 17-of-23 for 160 yards, while Zach Charbonnet, starting once again in place of an injured Kenneth Walker III, rushed for 57 yards on 15 carries. Kenny McIntosh added 46 yards on seven carries.

Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith (7) looks to pass against the Chicago Bears during the second quarter at Soldier Field. (Daniel Bartel-Imagn Images)

For the Bears, Williams was 16-of-28 for 122 yards with his interception. Moore was the top recipient with six catches for 54 yards, while D’Andre Swift had 53 rushing yards and 28 receiving yards on the night.

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.

Sports

Accustomed to heartbreak, can UCLA's Mick Cronin get his Gonzaga breakthrough?

Published

8 hours ago

December 27, 2024

Press Room

Accustomed to heartbreak, can UCLA's Mick Cronin get his Gonzaga breakthrough?

When Mick Cronin rewatched what might have been the most excruciating loss of his career, doing so only because he needed to scout the same opponent for a rematch the following season, the final sequence was pleasing.

UCLA’s Johnny Juzang extended his right arm to snag a rebound and rose toward the basket for a putback that tied the score against Gonzaga with 3.3 seconds remaining in the overtime of their 2021 Final Four classic.

Around that moment, Cronin pressed pause.

That meant Jalen Suggs never took the inbounds pass, never frantically dribbled just a few steps past halfcourt and never launched the shot that bounced off the backboard and through the net, breaking the heart of every Bruin.

“That shot?” Cronin told The Times this month. “No, I’ve never seen it.”

Two years later, in the NCAA tournament’s Sweet 16, the Bulldogs gave the UCLA coach another reason to selectively watch the replay. Only a few moments after Amari Bailey’s three-pointer gave the Bruin a late lead, Gonzaga’s Julian Strawther got it back with another game-winning heave on the edge of the March Madness logo at center court.

What are the chances the same opponent crushes your soul twice in essentially the same way?

“Yeah, I know,” Cronin said when reminded. “I mean, it is what it is. Hopefully, the ball bounces your way sometimes.”

Saturday would be a good place to start against the team that has tormented Cronin the most. He’s 0-4 against Gonzaga with the Bruins — and suffered another bitter overtime defeat against coach Mark Few’s team in 2009 while coaching Cincinnati — heading into a nationally broadcast clash between No. 22 UCLA (10-2) and the No. 14 Bulldogs (9-3) at the Intuit Dome.

By nature, coaches tend to hold on to losses more than wins; it’s what drives them to keep pushing, trying to be the team on the other side of the ledger. Invariably, the toughest losses are the ones that end their season.

“At UCLA,” Cronin said, “I’m 9-3 in the NCAA tournament and all three of our losses were brutal.”

Over a career spanning three schools and 22 seasons, Cronin has won 490 games. Possibly his three most painful losses — two against Gonzaga and one against North Carolina — came within the last five seasons. All were in the NCAA tournament.

Gonzaga guard Jalen Suggs celebrates after making the winning basket to eliminate UCLA in the NCAA Final Four on April 3, 2021.

(Michael Conroy / Associated Press)

Cronin said the 2021 Gonzaga loss was harder to stomach than the 2023 Gonzaga loss because the latter setback came with top defender Jaylen Clark and starting big man Adem Bona sidelined because of injuries.

“It would have been an unbelievable win without those two guys,” Cronin said. “To me, we were a massive underdog and I don’t know how much gas we had left in the tank playing without those two guys. So I don’t know how much further we’d have gone.”

The Bruins might as well have been shorthanded in the 2021 Final Four matchup given that starting guard Jules Bernard woke up that morning with a bad case of food poisoning. Severely weakened, he took just three shots and finished with five points in 18 minutes.

“Those are the things that bother me more than crazy shots or anything like that because the injuries, it’s like, you know, you can’t prepare for it, you can’t plan for it, there’s nothing you can do about it,” Cronin said. “It just happens.”

A year later, against North Carolina in the Sweet 16, forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. missed his final nine shots while playing on a badly sprained ankle that he had injured only days earlier in the final minutes of a victory over Saint Mary’s.

“I was just about to get him out” of the game, Cronin said with a dark laugh.

UCLA remained in excellent position to beat the Tar Heels even with Jaquez basically playing on one leg. The Bruins led by three points with less than two minutes to play, then everything that could go wrong for them did.

UCLA's Tyger Campbell, left, and Jaime Jaquez Jr. react during the final seconds of the Bruins' 73-66 loss to North Carolina.

A Caleb Love three-pointer was off the mark, the ball bouncing off the rim and within an inch of going out of bounds before North Carolina teammate Armando Bacot made a wild, over-the-shoulder save directly to Love, whose next three-pointer went in. Love added another three-pointer, Jaquez’s cold streak deepened with three more misses, and the Tar Heels went on to win by five points.

It was a sequence reminiscent of last weekend’s game between the teams, when the Bruins lost a 16-point lead during a 76-74 setback against the Tar Heels in the CBS Sports Classic. Of course, a December defeat never hurts as much as one in March.

“I just think that that team,” Cronin said of the 2022 version that lost to North Carolina, “we were deep enough that we could have won the title.”

Cronin acknowledged the difficulty in processing the repeated heartbreak, saying “you’ve got to grow up and be mature.”

“Yeah, it’s not easy to deal with, but look, I’ve got pretty decent perspective in life,” Cronin said. “I’m the son of a high school coach who rose to be the coach at UCLA. So if I start complaining, I don’t think many people are going to listen, nor should they. Like, nobody’s feeling sorry for me.

“So, I mean, I just think sometimes it’s not in the cards; hopefully, one day it’s in the cards for you. All you can do is keep working at it.”

Besides, one of Cronin’s biggest failures led to perhaps his greatest success. What might have happened if his Cincinnati team didn’t blow a 22-point lead against Nevada in the second round of the 2018 NCAA tournament?

“That one, I kind of put in the can,” Cronin said. “Yeah, it was brutal, but if that didn’t happen I’d probably still be there. They’d probably have given me a lifetime contract or something crazy like that and I’m not here. I probably wouldn’t be the coach at UCLA.”